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Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Carter at Cardozo

What is it with peace prizes? The Cardozo School of Law which is part of Yeshiva University is to award Jimmy Carter something called the“International Advocate for Peace” for a lifetime of work of some sort. This is to be done on Wednesday 10 April 2013; a day that has already begun here and is advancing relentlessly towards New York as we speak. Can there be anything done to stop this? Is it too late?Let's be frank about this. Jimmy Carter is the US's worst ever president. Not just since the war or in the last century. Ever. I say that after some reflection. His presidency was one long low howl of humiliation and shame for America and America's friends. It is a travesty of history to give him any part of the credit for the courageous initiatives of Begin and Sadat and the peace treaty it led to. Begin and Sadat were the statesmen. Carter was an opponent of a "separate peace" and damn near sabotaged it. It was just one dumb and dangerous debacle after another and a reckless negligence that bordered on the criminal from this strange and creepy man. Then it got worse. After Carter was enthusiastically tossed out of the White House by the American people at the first opportunity he has become America's most enthusiastic friend of America's enemies and America's most prominent slanderer of Israel. You can't be one without the other.Here's a list.

“I can’t imagine a worse person to honor for conflict resolution. Here’s a man who has engendered conflict wherever he goes. He has encouraged terrorism by Hamas and Hezbollah. He was partly responsible for Yasser Arafat turning down the Clinton-Barak peace offer,” Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz told The Algemeiner in an interview. Dershowitz wrote about Carter in his book “The Case Against Israel’s Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand in the Way of Peace.”

“He is significantly responsible for the second Intifada. If he had told Yasser Arafat to accept that deal we might be celebrating Palestinian statehood today,” Dershowitz added. “He just prefers terrorists to Israelis.”

"Jimmy Carter has anignominious historyof anti-Israel bigotry. He is responsible for helping to mainstream the antisemitic notion that Israel is an apartheid state with his provocatively titled book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”, the publication of which prompted mass resignations from the Carter Center. He has met numerous times with leaders of the terror group Hamas whitewashing their genocidal goals and undermining US efforts to isolate Hamas. And Carter’s record of slandering Israel is so voluminous that both CAMERA and Alan Dershowitz have written books refuting his lies."

What's to be done? The dean of the law school cannot attend the award ceremony if he is to distance the institution from the award as he is being firmly counselled. Nor should the faculty. And the students?

Dershowitz has the best advice.

"Students should attend the ceremony “and in a dignified and respectful way show contempt for Jimmy Carter,” he said. “Students should know who they’re honoring. The response to bad speech is good speech. You don’t cancel the event you use it as an educational opportunity to teach people about the evil things that Jimmy Carter has done.”"

.. in a dignified and respectful way show contempt for Jimmy Carter ...

Spoken like true lawyer. I suggest they quietly stand and turn their backs but under no circumstances should they throw their shoes. And the rest of us?

You can go to this site and vote on whether Carter deserves this award.

And then you can go this site and vote on who was America's worst president.

I've made that allegation and Dershowitz is a good enough source for me. He made the statement to that reporter slow and deliberate. Dershowitz is not speculating here. It's up to Carter to respond. Dershowitz has offered to debate Carter before the entire law school on the core subject of human rights; without question the great issue of our time.

The popular liberal view of Carter is that he has been a devoted peace visionary all his life and pulled out one great gem while president. His post WH work is seen as a disconnect. The suggestion is that the antipathy to Israel is something that developed out of his experience in office.

A big concept man. Sure. At one time I was close to some senior US officials from that era. Carter was a fussy and irritating micro manager so focused on the grains of sand that he never saw the beach.

Carter has been consistent all his political life. He has always seen Israel as a root cause of the Middle East violent dysfunction and that you could not fix the Middle East without fixing Israel. He initially opposed a separate peace between Israel and Egypt and wanted to bring in all other parties with an interest including, incredibly, the Soviet Union. Carter wasn't driving the peace train. He had to run like hell to catch it.

Advising Arafat to reject Barak's offer in 2000 is entirely consistent with all of this. I have no difficulty believing it. As Carter would say, "in his heart" he did not really support a two state solution. Not even when it may have been possible.

Very likely Arafat would have rejected it anyway. Nevertheless Carter should bear the moral guilt and Dershowitz is quite right to pin it on him right now.

He at least had the right ideas on energy, decades ahead of his time, and as president he cleared the way for good beer to come back to the US (1979 beer industry deregulation). Hmmm, and maybe that was it.

His unquestionable role in spreading the vile 'apartheid' smear alone would seem to be enough to mark him as an enemy of Israel, and therefore of the Jewish people. If even just a few of the other charges are correct, I'd say yeah, it definitely qualifies him for consideration as one of the most unfortunate people we've ever managed to put onto the world stage.

Yep Jay and the name Carter is still faintly associated with beer even as far as Australia. Indeed that would have been an interesting household as I think Empress Trudy has just alluded to. I have always maintained the brother would have made a better president. He could not have done more harm and at least it would have been entertaining.

The main thing about energy is that most of the major oil companies were firmly in the pockets of the Saudis and the rest when Carter was elected and they still were when he left office. The oil companies projected a malign anti-Israel ( I maintain antisemitic) influence, including boycotts, across the globe as part payment for this strategic resource. Willingly paid as we all know they do.

Nothing has changed. It was reported here yesterday that European (British/Dutch) oil mega company Shell is divesting itself of a significant investment in Australian resources giant Woodside after the Australian MNC started the process of taking up a strategic stake in the consortium developing the Tamar gas field.

It's summer again around here, so my preference is for Sly Fox Pikeland Pils at the moment, though. ;)

That part about the energy thing is still striking to me, and though I'm allergic to conspiracy theories, as one of my favorite current commentators would say, I do have to wonder if perhaps his anti-Israel fanaticism since he was unceremoniously booted out of the White House, may have something to do with paying penance for that?

What makes you think he's a not a racist at his core? Just because he claims to be a lay deacon in the SBC and makes all sorts of liberal sounding noises about the brotherhood of man? A real son of rural Georgia I think. It just hasn't been politically advantageous for him to rip the mask all the way off. Somehow I don't picture Jimmy recounting his days with the Freedom Riders and MLK and such. I don't think anyone's called him on his overarching racist beliefs, yet and it's been convenient for all of us to not ask him. Oh I'm sure some his best friends are Black and such, real credit to their people and such. Of course. But rural Georgia dirt farmers are what they are. Poke at them hard enough they're telling you about the good old days with segregated water fountains...Bet on it. No one this much of a vicious piece of evil limits himself to just Jews.

Trashing Southerners has always been one 'progressive' pastime that's always gotten my goat (probably maybe even the earliest, as I worked my way along the path to heresy in the 'movement'), but I think Trudy makes a good point here.

I would object to calling Carter 'filth,' in the same way as I would object to the dehumanization of anybody.

But I think, particularly in light of the way he's acted himself over the years, that it's quite fair to call into question exactly what it is he truly believes 'in his heart,' especially considering the way he's been so quick to cast aspersions on others, or at least certainly on Jews...

"There are constant and vehement political and media debates in Israel concerning its policies in the West Bank but because of powerful political, economic, and religious forces in the U.S., Israeli government decisions are rarely questioned or condemned, voices from Jerusalem dominate our media, and most American citizens are unaware of circumstances in the occupied territories.".......Jimmy Carter in his book "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid"

Heh....if a Kossack said it he'd rightfully be labelled an anti-semite. Well there you have it folks. Jimmy Carter, who was President and therefore should know, has said that Jews control it all. Is it any wonder Kossacks and their ilk want the right to make the same accusations without being labelled?

"Former President Jimmy Carter once complained there were "too many Jews" on the government's Holocaust Memorial Council, Monroe Freedman, the council's former executive director, told WND in an exclusive interview.

Freedman, who served on the council during Carter's term as president, also revealed a noted Holocaust scholar who was a Presbyterian Christian was rejected from the council's board by Carter's office because the scholar's name "sounded too Jewish."

Freedman says he was tasked with creating a board for the council and with making recommendations to the White House on how best to memorialize the Holocaust.

He told WND he sent a memo to Carter's office containing recommendations for council board members.

He said his memo was returned with a note on the upper right hand corner that stated, "Too many Jews." The note, Freedman said, was written in Carter's handwriting and was initialed by Carter."

"In fact, Palestinian-Arab terrorism is virtually missing from Mr. Carter's entire historical account, which blames nearly everything on Israel and almost nothing on the Palestinians. Incredibly, he asserts that the initial violence in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict occurred when "Jewish militants" attacked Arabs in 1939."

One wonders if getting elected to high office does something to one's brain after looking at Jimmy's legacy. Then there is Tony Blair:

"The Qur’an "is practical and way ahead of its time".

"The most remarkable thing about reading the Koran – in so far as it can be truly translated from the original Arabic - is to understand how progressive it is.

"I speak with great diffidence and humility as a member of another faith. I am not qualified to make any judgements. But as an outsider, the Koran strikes me as a reforming book, trying to return Judaism and Christianity to their origins, rather as reformers attempted with the Christian Church centuries later. It is inclusive. It extols science and knowledge and abhors superstition. It is practical and way ahead of its time in attitudes to marriage, women and governance," he said.

He added that under the guidance of the Qur’an, the spread of Islam and its dominance over previously Christian or pagan lands was "breathtaking".

"Over centuries it founded an Empire, leading the world in discovery, art and culture. We look back to the early Middle Ages, the standard bearers of tolerance at that time were far more likely to be found in Muslim lands than in Christian," he declared."

Of course the protests I lodged with Columbia-JTS (Jewish Theological Seminary) which have a shared degree program, when Columbia prostrated itself to host Ahmadinejad went unanswered too. I almost would have preferred they waffled defended it instead of silence. Once again we're our own worst enemies. What next for Cardozo? A seminar of Sharia Justice? A conference on whether Holocaust Deniers are right?

I am writing to express my deep disappointment with YU's decision to honor former president Jimmy Carter.

The foremost threat that the Jewish people face today is the ongoing effort to delegitimize and defame the Jewish State of Israel. Among anti-Semitic anti-Zionists Israel is perpetually painted in the blackest colors. They describe Israel as a racist, colonialist, imperialist, militarist, apartheid, racist state that should never have come into being to being with.

Carter has done more than anyone to project this entirely false and malicious notion, a notion which results in Jewish dead.

To honor such a man is a form of Jewish self-degradation.

I would very much encourage Yeshiva University and the Cardozo School of Law to reconsider this invitation and to further consider the damage that you are doing to your own reputation within the Jewish community.

Barack Obama on the so-called "Arab Spring" (May 19, 2011):

"There are times in the course of history when the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has been building up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat."

The "Arab Spring" was the brutal rise of political Islam in the Middle East and this is what Obama compares the Civil Rights Movement to?

The Fundamental Argument:

The progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, creates and supports venues that demonize and defame the Jewish state, thereby also creating hatred toward the Jewish people.

Such venues include political journals, such as, but not limited to, Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, and the UK Guardian, numerous universities throughout the United States and Europe, various NGOs with an anti-Israel agenda, and the entire progressive-left movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) the Jewish people of the state of Israel.

These venues and organizations do not generally criticize Israel, but dehumanize that country.

For this reason, among others, the progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, undermines the well-being and safety of Jews around the world, sometimes resulting in violence toward us.

Therefore, as a matter of common sense and basic human decency, Jews should leave the progressive movement and the Democratic Party as we seek to build alternative political structures that are not home to toxic anti-Semitic anti-Zionists, who would see us robbed of self-determination and self-defense.

What You Can't Discuss:

This is a partial list of taboo topics within progressive-left venues around the Arab-Israel conflict. You cannot discuss this material because it undermines the "Palestinian narrative" of perpetual victimhood. This narrative is a club used by the Arab and Muslim enemies of Israel, along with their western progressive allies, to delegitimize that country in preparation for its eventual dissolution.

1) The centuries of Jewish dhimmitude under the boot of Islamic imperialism.

2) The recent construction of Palestinian identity, its connection to Soviet Cold War politics, and how this is an Arab people with a Roman name that refers to Greeks.

3) Arab and Palestinian Koranically-based racism as the fundamental source of the conflict.

4) The ways in which contemporary progressive anti-Zionism serves as a cloak for gross anti-Semitism.

5) The Palestinian theft and appropriation of Jewish history.

6) "Pallywood."

7) The historical connections between the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinian national movement.

8) The perpetual refusal of the Palestinian-Arabs to accept a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one.

9) The progressive portrayal of terrorists as those fighting a righteous war of "resistance."

10) The Arab-Palestinian indoctrination of children with Jew hatred.

11) Human rights violations against women, children, and Gay people in the Muslim Middle East.

12) The fact that violent Jihadis call themselves "Jihadis" and claim to love death above life.

This is only a partial list, so please let us know the many more that we are missing.

Quote of the Whenever:

It is not that most progressives are anti-Semitic. They aren't. It's that they don't get it, they don't care, and they very much want you to shut the fuck up. - Michael Lumish